


Small Plates

by subjunctive



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-22 00:39:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 4,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11956083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subjunctive/pseuds/subjunctive
Summary: A collection of Jon/Sansa snippets.





	1. Modern AU, haircut

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter titles contain universe/prompts. All of these were previously posted on Tumblr.

She’d spritzed his hair with water until it was soaking wet and nearly black, but it was still curling enough to trip her up.

“Stop that,” Sansa admonished, pulling a lock straight between her fingers. It wasn’t quite perfect.

“I can’t help it,” Jon protested.

“Well, tell it to stop!” She could hardly measure accurately if his hair was determined not to lay straight.

“It just does what it wants. My input is negligible.”

Sansa used up the last of her spray bottle, pumping the nozzle until the bottle went dry and drops of water were trickling down his scalp and the back of his neck. As quick as she could, she began pulling locks of his hair straight out from his head and snipping at the ends.

“If it’s not perfect …” she said in a warning tone.

Jon sighed. “I won’t blame you.”

“Well, I appreciate that. But I’d rather you do well at your interview tomorrow no matter what your hair looks like.”

That was why he was here in the first place, sitting on the floor of her apartment and submitting himself to her shears. Jon was in his final year of law school and had an interview with a major environmental NGO the next day. _It’s a good opportunity,_ he’d told her neutrally enough, but behind his eyes she’d seen the truth: _I love this job. I want it. I need it._ A nice haircut, she’d suggested, as his current locks were getting rather long and, dare she say it, straggly.

“It’s done,” she announced finally, running her hand through his hair again and making him sigh–though in a different tenor, this time.

“Thanks, Sansa,” he said quietly, reaching up to test the length of his hair himself with a tug.

“No problem.”

Sansa watched a droplet trail down the back of his neck, over the knob of his spine, disappearing into the collar of his KLU sweatshirt. Her fingertips scratched lightly over his scalp, down, down, down, following that tempting trail …

He sucked in a breath. “Sansa …”

She pulled back. “No?” She wasn’t sure if she could take it if the answer was no.

Jon turned around, bracing his palms on his knees. He felt awkward, she could tell, but he would say what he thought he had to all the same. He was uncomfortably honest. She respected that, and dreaded it.

“I can’t afford any distractions right now. Not with the interview coming up.”

She swallowed. She didn’t want to be a distraction, didn’t want to be unhelpful. She wanted to be the opposite of that. But somehow she found the courage to press the toes of one foot into his thigh and look into his eyes and say, “Tomorrow, then. Come by after, straight away, whether it goes well or badly. Either way, I want to hear all about it.”

“All right.” Despite the casualness of the words, there was a promise behind them, and Sansa meant to meet it.


	2. Book or Show, silent treatment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "Jon tells Dany he'll think about a political marriage, and doesn't understand why Sansa (and a loyal Arya and Bran) are all so pissed off about it."

“Have you even noticed?”

Arya levels her question at Jon over roast rabbit. They went out hunting today, and it was Arya who bagged the rabbit, a cause for celebration throughout the castle. That’s a small cause to celebrate, but in the heart of winter in the North, sometimes it’s the little things.

“Noticed what?”

“Sansa’s angry with you.” She and Bran are, too, but for a different reason. Mostly different.

Jon jerks a scrap of meat off the bones and stuffs it in his mouth. “Of course I have.”

Arya is a bit lost. “Then–why?” She doesn’t know how to finish that thought.

He shrugs, sullen, and she’s reminded of their childhood, of his quiet avoidance and resentment of her mother, of her own loyalties divided and twisted helplessly. “She won’t talk to me, I won’t talk to her,” he says. It makes him sound painfully young.

It makes her breath catch in her throat. “Jon …”

He waves her off irritably. “The Queen’s only asked that I do my duty.”

“You’ve done your duty, though,” she argues. “You died for your duty.”

His spoon clatters on the table. He avoids her eyes, but she can sense his anger rising.

“She just wants you to marry some southron lady and go away forever.”

“I know,” he grates out.

“Hasn’t there been enough asked of you?” Arya whispers. “Can’t you do this one thing for yourself?”

“When have I ever done anything for myself?” he demands. “When have I ever been allowed?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying!” Arya cries, standing up with the force of her words, the force of her feelings. They’re both panting, as if they’ve run a race or fought a battle.

“She won’t talk to me, I won’t talk to her,” he repeats mulishly, and Arya knows he won’t, or can’t, budge.

* * *

“You ought to talk to Jon,” says Arya, watching Sansa in her mirror. She’s pulling the pins from her elaborate hair, one by one.

“About what?” Her words are rife with studied innocence, as if she has no idea what Arya is talking about. Sansa used to be the liar, but Arya spent many moons lying in service of the House of Black and White, never quite No One, and she knows what a liar sounds like.

“About him going south and marrying some woman the Queen’s picked out for him,” Arya says impatiently.

Sansa shakes out a braid over her shoulder. “What business of that is mine?”

Arya sighs. “Really? Truly?”

“If you have something to say, then by all means say it.” There’s an edge to Sansa’s voice.

“You have something to say to him, so you should say it,” insists Arya. “You do know what I mean. I did not imagine all those walks through the godswood where you whispered to each other and came out with rosy cheeks. I know I didn’t.”

Sansa slaps down a pin on the vanity with a vengeance. “He’s already said he’ll consider it. That raven’s flown.”

“Then tell him to re-consider,” Arya pleads. She’s reduced to pleading with Sansa, gods help her. “Keep him here, at home. You know you can.”

“I know no such thing.”

“Then at least tell him you’re upset with him, and why.”

“Why? What good would that do?”

She sounds genuinely incredulous. Sansa didn’t pay much attention to Jon when they were children, so she doesn’t understand now.

“Just so he knows,” Arya says. It feels like a betrayal of Jon to keep going, but she thinks it’s the worse betrayal to not. “So it’s not like … when he was a child, and Mother was angry, and he didn’t understand and it hurt him.” She’d seen the pain shining in his eyes then. She caught a glimpse of it again the day before, even though her mother was long dead.

“Mother was a great lady, Arya,” says Sansa severely.

“Maybe she was, but maybe you can be greater, too. Speak to him.”

“He should have spoken to me when the raven came. But he didn’t. If he won’t speak with me, I won’t speak with him.” Sansa’s voice is firm, and Arya despairs of them both.


	3. Modern AU, marriage of inconvenience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt, "I think it will be a marriage of inconvenience."

“Are you sure it wouldn’t be a marriage of IN-convenience?”

Jon is smiling when he says this, a sort of puzzled, slightly condescending smile that makes Sansa’s teeth grind. It’s like he’s saying, _You haven’t really thought this out, have you?_ But she’s explored every other option, with the help of Maester Luwin and his excellent research skills, and while she doesn’t particularly want to marry Jon, she wants to marry Ramsay Bolton even less. The North is short of eligible, age-appropriate men of her station, or near her station anyway.

“Clever,” she says generously, and his eyes narrow. He’s not an idiot. “But if the marriage laws apply to me, don’t they also apply to you?”

Across the desk, he goes still. The only movement is the tap of his finger against his stubble. “What are you saying?” he says warily.

“I’m saying that these antiquated laws apply to all houses in the North, even minor ones,” she said sweetly. He’s thirty-two, two years past the deadline that is quickly approaching for her.

“No one’s said anything about that to me,” he says. There’s a look of alarm in his eye. Victory.

“Perhaps they haven’t. But legally you’re in the same danger as me–in fact, someone could challenge your right to House Snow right this moment, if they wanted to.” Sansa rests her chin on her hand, letting her hair fall over her shoulder in a shiny, slick curtain. “We could help each other out.”

For the first time, she gets a hint of discomposure from him as he rubs his palms on his jeans. He’s sweating. “You’re not serious, Sansa.” But he sounds a lot less sure than he did a few minutes ago.

“I’m completely serious,” she affirms. “One hundred and ten percent serious. We can do a ceremony, produce a couple of heirs–one for each of our houses–and be on our merry ways.” _Produce heirs_. It’s very clinical wording. She leaves any mention of the actual method out. Mentioning either sex or IVF at this moment would be equally repulsive to him, she thinks.

He squirms. “Isn’t there someone else you’d rather …?”

“Isn’t there someone I’d rather fall in love with and marry in the span of two weeks?” she asks dryly. “Listen to yourself, Jon. That’s not realistic.”

No, it’s not at all realistic, and that fact makes her heart ache. Damn Ramsay and damn his damn father, too. They’ve pushed her into a corner. She reckons they’re not going to like what they see next.

Or perhaps there’s someone else Jon wants. That makes her heart skip a beat, too. His social media profile has remained notoriously, comfortably ‘Single’ for years and years–like her, he’s been the object of constant familial inquiries about finding someone and settling down–but it’s entirely possible there’s someone out there, someone special to him that she doesn’t know about. There are probably entire sections of his life she is completely unaware of. It’s an odd thought. It’s probably mean to hope he is as lonely as she is, but there it is.

It’s not her fault; it’s the Boltons’. And she means to make them pay for it.

He still looks skeptical. She breaks out her last card and reaches across the desk to lightly graze the back of his hand with her fingertips.

“Jon, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t serious. This is my parents’ legacy. Ned Stark’s legacy.” She leaves her mother out of it, much as it pains her.

That, far more than the pragmatism, does it for him. He takes a deep breath. “Okay.”


	4. Book or Show, letting him go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a five-sentence fic meme where the first sentence was provided.

"It's his choice, Arya. If he wishes to leave, then we will let him go and be here if he decides to come back."

“You never loved him, not like me,” Arya said, her voice quiet–-not the quiet of calm but the stillness that precedes a furious storm.

“No,” Sansa agreed, plucking a wayward stitch to do it over, “but I do love him.”

Arya’s voice was cold, cutting, when she said, “How could you, if you want to let him go?”

Sansa’s wrist trembled every so slightly. “I don’t want him to do any such thing, but he’s determined, and nothing either of us say will change that”–- _and I won’t wait by a window, I won’t be a foolish girl in a song, not even for him._


	5. Modern AU, stop it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a five-sentence fic meme where the first sentence was provided.

"Oh my god! Stop it, stop it, stop it!"

“Stop what?” Jon asked, like he sincerely wanted to know, all while dragging his finger–-the same finger!–-through the frosting, leaving a trench behind, and sticking it in his mouth.

Sansa shrieked.

“How are you going to frost the cookies now?” he asked, quite reasonably, when she snatched the big silver mixing bowl and held it out of his reach.

“I won’t be able to if you keep eating it!” she warned as he drew closer.

His kiss tasted sweet enough that Sansa didn’t even notice when he lifted the bowl gently away.


	6. Book or Show, who am I to you?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a five-sentence fic prompt where the first line was provided.

_Jon, who am I to you?_ It was the sort of question he was glad she never asked, for he had no ready answer, not even one for himself. _Family_ (and if he ignored the associated words–- _duty, honor_ -–it was only because he was no Tully, no matter how much he’d wanted, and a good thing too, for that would compound their sins). _Lover_ -–the word makes his stomach clench. His head and his heart haven’t been the same since he woke, muddled and confused. The only thing he knows is that she’s Sansa.


	7. Modern AU, knitting a scarf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "knitting a scarf."

When he comes back from walking Ghost, Jon finds her curled up on the floral-patterned sofa, with her feet tucked underneath her and her hands as busy as they have been for the past two weeks. Maybe busier.

“You’re going to run yourself ragged,” he says, walking into the kitchen for a glass and filling it with the tap. “I’m going to come over one day soon and your hands will just be gone.”

“Ha, ha.” Sansa sounds distracted. Then, as if remembering something: “Oh! Jon! Come here.”

He obeys, sitting on the couch when she pats the space next to her. Putting down the scarf she’s working on, in robin’s-egg blue, Sansa reaches into her knitting basket and retrieves a few skeins of yarn, all different shades of gray or silver. Kneeling next to him on the cushion, she holds one up to his cheek.

It’s scratchy on his skin. She leans so close their noses almost touch, so close she could kiss him. His tongue feels thick in his suddenly dry mouth.

“What are you doing?” he whispers into her careful scrutiny.

Sansa frowns. “You’re up next. This isn’t the right color. Here, let me …” Bracing one hand on his shoulder, she discards one skein and retrieves another, repeating the process. It’s his eyes she’s peering at so intently, he realizes.

“You’re making me a scarf?”

“It’s tradition.”

Every year, on All Souls’ Day, Catelyn had given her kids a new scarf she’d made. It’s the Starks’ tradition, not his. He’d never gotten a scarf, not even when he’d been living here for a few years.

“That’s not right, either,” she murmurs, holding up a third skein. “If this one doesn’t work, I’ll have to go back to the store.”

“It’s a lot of work,” he says, rubbing his palms against his jeans. “You’ve done so much already, you don’t have to …”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says briskly, gently patting his cheek. “You’re part of the family…. Oh, stop blinking so much, it’s messing me up.”

Jon banishes his sudden blinking fit as best he can. “I just don’t want you to go to any extra work.” His voice is a little hoarse.

“You’ll have to come with me to the store,” she decides. “Tomorrow morning? Are you busy?”

“It’s a date.”

At his wording, her cheeks turn pink, but she smiles.


	8. Modern AU, changing diapers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "changing diapers."

Much as he doesn’t want to, Jon forces himself to get up when the baby’s wail first wakes him up. He and Sansa trade off nights; on his first night of baby duty, he had rolled over and gone back to sleep, and the dark circles under her eyes guilted him for the rest of the day. That was weeks ago.

She still gets up half the time anyway, and tonight is no exception to that rule.

“Go back to sleep,” he says in a scolding whisper, not sure whether he’s talking to her or the newly changed baby, who is now gurgling.

Coming to his side instead, Sansa peers down into the crib.

 _It was only the one time._ Lack of sleep is making him cranky. “He’s all right, you know. You don’t have to get up on my nights anymore.”

“I know. I like watching you with him, though.” She leans her head against his shoulder.

All the irritation runs out of him. “Oh. Well… all right then.”

There are things to do. Things like throwing away the diaper. Things like going back to bed. But they stand there together, leaning on each other, for a little while yet.


	9. Modern AU, shopping for mattresses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "shopping for mattresses."

“What do you think of this one?”

She tries to make her voice carefully neutral, but her excitement betrays her. This is the one she wants.

“It’s…” Jon shifts on the mattress. “I feel like I’m going to fall right through to the floor.”

“That’s what’s great about it,” she chirps. “Not at all like those hard cots you slept on in the military.”

Jon doesn’t want to see one of those again, but he needs some support. What are they supposed to do? Get something in between, making sure they both sleep badly?

What’s that her mother says? _Happy wife, happy life?_ And with that little knowing wink that, if he’s being completely honest, gets on his nerves. This isn’t marriage, but they are moving in together and buying a mattress. Is he supposed to just go with whatever she wants? Is that what she’s expecting?

A salesperson materializes to rescue him. “If you like different levels of firmness, we do have mattresses that allow you to customize each side of the bed. That way you both get the support you need.”

Jon remembers Ned’s words about relationships then, and sits up.

“Yeah, I definitely like firmer.” When he looks down at Sansa–-still lying down, her auburn hair fanning out–-she doesn’t look disappointed.

“Oh, that would be perfect, then!” She beams. “Let’s check it out.”

 _It’s all about communication and compromise._ Yes, he’d rather go with Ned’s advice.


	10. Books, falling asleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "falling asleep."

“You sleep like the dead.”

The dark joke, mocking both him and her own fears whenever she sleeps beside him, makes the corner of his mouth turn up, even though his eyes are still closed.

“And you?” he mumbles into the furs. “Did you sleep?”

Sansa looks toward the window, where it’s still night. “A little.”

It’s not fair. Oh, Jon doesn’t sleep well-–he tosses and turns and it takes a long time for his breathing to grow shallow and slumber to steal over him, stilling him to a statue. But he doesn’t wake restlessly a dozen times a night, and he isn’t besieged by nightmares, because he dreams with his wolf, and wolf dreams are power and protection. All her siblings say so.

_If Lady was here, would I dream with her? Would she protect me?_

It wasn’t like this before she came home. Why is it here that she grows the most anxious? Why is it at Winterfell that her nightmares are the darkest? Why is it at home that she cannot seem to stop remembering all the worst things that have happened to her elsewhere, when she spent years forgetting them and leaving them behind her?

He nuzzles her hip sleepily and throws an arm over her thighs. In return Sansa strokes her fingers through his hair-–it’s getting long-–and lightly scratches her nails over his scalp. At least there’s Jon.


	11. Modern AU, ghost-hunting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "exterminating pests." I got a little creative.

“This doesn’t look like a house that’s haunted,” Sansa said, eyeing the foyer around her doubtfully. _Unless you mean haunted by poor taste._

“They’re not all run-down ruins, in the middle of nowhere, with broken windows, occupied by black cats,” was Jon’s dry response.

“Still. A McMansion?” She couldn’t disguise the distaste in her voice. Surely a ghost could find a less repellent piece of architecture to haunt.

Jon smiled. “Between you and me, the husband seems a little superstitious and, well, it’s money and they have it …”

There was that. A degree in literature did not confer incredible job opportunities-–though it didn’t help that all of Sansa’s friendships and connections had gone belly-up by the end of her degree, leaving her a tiny island isolated in the middle of the sea. Metaphorically speaking. Jon had been nice enough to give her this job (record-taking, officially, which was sort of like writing, which was adjacent to literature, if she looked at it in the right light, which she was determined to do).

“You never know,” she allowed. “Perhaps the previous owner so regretted these oddly placed columns and the wallpaper designed to look like draped silk that they simply cannot move on into the next life until the situation is rectified.”

Jon’s laugh was almost silent. He didn’t laugh a lot, or even smile that much, which Sansa told herself was the reason for her warm glow.

“I’m not sure it works that way.”

“What way do you think it does work?” she ventured.

He shrugged, looking embarrassed. Via Pyp and Grenn, who were gregarious when generously beered, Sansa had found out that Jon wasn’t running a paranormal ghost hunting scam, but was something of a true believer himself, even though every case he’d ever taken ended in an explanation of the foundation settling, a draft, oddly placed reflective surfaces, and the like. They didn’t say why, only vaguely alluding to _some experiences_. Sansa had found herself terribly curious. Her cousin was so stolid and no-nonsense. It made her wonder what could make a man like that believe in the supernatural. She couldn’t even imagine him doing something as ordinary as falling in love.

Tonight, she decided, she would find out.


	12. Wheel of Time AU, Remixed Lan/Nynaeve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for this year's Jon/Sansa remix. I chose the couple Lan/Nynaeve from _Wheel of Time_ and wrote this snippet, based on a scene from _The Eye of the World_. (I haven’t read past book three of the series, so don’t spoil me, please!) Some lines have been lifted directly or rearranged from the original scene.

Sansa ran her fingers over the end of her braid and tugged, ducking her head in a pretense of not looking at him, even though that was exactly what she was doing.

Everyone else was asleep, except for the Warder. Jon was leaning back against the thick trunk of a tree, facing the fire. The point of his sword was sunk into the soft, wet earth. With one hand he held the hilt, and with the other he was rubbing the blade with an oilcloth. It glimmered in the firelight. To others, the sight might have distracted from the man himself. Not Sansa.

He was clearly in no hurry. Yet a feeling grew in Sansa that if she didn’t say something now, the opportunity would slip through her fingers like water, never to be recovered.

That sense propelled her to her feet and toward the fire. There was a half-full kettle of hot water remaining, and she busied herself filling two cups with the ladle while she pretended to ignore him and thought about what she would say.

Sansa thought she felt his eyes on her, a hot prickle on the back of her neck, but when she turned to catch him, he wasn’t looking, and her stomach dropped with disappointment and nerves. _I knew he wasn’t going to make it easy on me,_ she consoled herself. _But there’s something there, I’m sure of it._ It was a softening around his eyes when he looked at her. Pulling a pouch from one of her sleeves–-tea was never far from her person-–she made up two cups and settled beside him on her knees.

He dropped the oilcloth to take the cup she offered. When she met his eyes–serious gray eyes set in a long, solemn face that gave nothing away–all her grand plans for what to say flew out of her head.

So she said the first thing that came to mind. “I should have known you’d be a king.”

“Kings have thrones,” Jon said lightly, or as lightly as he ever said anything. “I’m just a man. I don’t even have a parcel of land, or a single piece of gold to my name.”

“There are some women who wouldn’t ask for the land, or the throne, or gold. Just the man.” She kept hold of his gaze, to make sure he understood.

For a moment he was silent. “No decent man would ask that of her. The asking would make him unworthy.”

She took a sip of tea, trying to judge her next words. They came out more petulant than she intended. “Do you mean to make me do the asking, then? Will you shame me so?”

“Sansa.” Her name, softly voiced, and the flicker of his gaze-–a warning.

His admonition stung like a needle. “You’ve already made me say more than is proper.”

“You know I have other obligations.” He glanced at the sleeping figures around the fire.

She knew who he meant. There was some mysterious magic between him and the maddening Daenerys Sedai with her silver hair and violet eyes, some force or power–protection, service, fealty, she knew not what. Something that bound him to her, some mission that drew them together. Aes Sedai and Warder, the pair of them. Some part of him belonged to that woman.

“I don’t care for any of that,” she insisted. “I have obligations, too-–I mean to go to Tar Valon.”

“And become an Aes Sedai. Aes Sedai seldom marry,” Jon pointed out.

“I’ve told you I don’t care.” It was like trying to argue with the stone face of a mountain, only mountains never gave her that gentle look that made her ache.

“All I have is a sword, and a war I cannot win, but can never stop fighting. The only thing I could give you is a wardrobe of widow’s black.” He set his untouched cup on the ground and rose. “I must check the horses.”

Sansa remained there, kneeling, after he had gone.


End file.
